Busy Bees

I was transplanting a few seedlings this afternoon, but found myself distracted by the going’s on at the bee hotel. Females are busy building cells for the next generation, males seem to be making a nuisance of themselves, and there’s a fair bit of aerial “scrapping” between bees. Unlike the social bees, like honeybees, these red masons are solitary and not of one family, so it’s a competitive environment. Here a female is at work constructing a cell, whilst a male buzzes past.